Today’s jobs data show another dismal month of job growth with just 29,000 new jobs added in September and downward revisions for July and August. The overall unemployment rate remained steady, though Black women’s unemployment rate jumped dramatically from 5.6 percent in August to 6.8 percent in September, driven by more Black women joining the labor market but not being able to find work.
Today’s data mean that close to two years into the second Trump Administration, a smaller share of women are working than at the start, in January 2025. This trend is true for both white and Black women, though notably Black women’s unemployment rates are substantially higher now than at the start of 2025, while white women’s has declined.
Latinas are a key exception to this trend: the share of working Latinas has climbed since January 2025. However, as the Economic Policy Institute notes, this increase is due in part to Latinas’ concentration in growing sectors like leisure and hospitality – the sector that pays the lowest wages. The continued overrepresentation of Latinas in low-paid jobs contributes to Latinas’ especially wide wage gap – a gap that grew in 2025.
Women’s job gains since January 2025 have also been meager – they have added fewer than 36,000 jobs a month. And the one real bright spot for women’s jobs – the health care sector, which has accounted for nearly 70 percent of women’s job growth between January 2025 and August 2026 – has a bleak outlook due to Trump’s attack on health care. Trump’s enormous spending cuts are projected to cost the economy as many as 1.65 million jobs by 2029 – primarily driven by cuts to Medicaid.
So it’s perhaps no surprise that women sharply disapprove of how the Trump administration is handling the economy. The most recent data from the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers reveals that women’s rating of the government’s economic policies – how women feel about the way the government is tackling inflation or unemployment – has once again bottomed out at nearly 50-year lows.
That’s because women know this economy – which exploits working people to benefit the powerful – is being driven by the Trump administration’s policies. The Trump administration is keeping wages low and allowing discrimination and harassment to flourish by slashing public sector jobs; focusing the limited resources to combat workplace discrimination on white men; decimating essential diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; dismantling critical workplace protections for women and more. These policy choices have created an economy that benefits the wealthy at the expense of women – especially women of color.
Rather than building a system that works for the ultra wealthy by exploiting workers – especially working women – policymakers should create an economy that works for everyone. This means making sure that people are fairly paid and are protected from discrimination and harassment. It means passing laws like paid leave and paid sick days to support care responsibilities, so workers don’t have to choose between a paycheck and their loved ones. These economic policies might actually garner women’s approval.